Haiti walks towards disaster while waiting for international help

On February 29, Alan was driving his vehicle along Route Delmas, in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, one of the usual routes between the upper and lower part of the city.

He had gone to drop off a client at the airport and was returning to his area of ​​operation, near Petionville, in the upper part, a neighborhood of embassies and banks.

“There, in Delmas,” he explains by phone from the Haitian capital, “I began to see that the situation was getting complicated.

“I already saw bodies lying on the floor and everything.”

It was the beginning of the latest wave of violence in Haiti, which has not yet ended.

Since that day, criminal gangs from the capital have indiscriminately attacked everything that smacks of the State in Port-au-Prince, with special attention to the National Police stations - the bandits have attacked at least nine -, its cadet academy, the prisons, from which more than 3,500 prisoners have escaped, the Sylvio Cator national stadium and the international airport, which closed and has not reopened.

On Friday night, a group of gang members opened fire at the doors of the National Palace and tried to set fire to the headquarters of the Ministry of the Interior, where the agents finally managed to contain the revolt.

Political sources familiar with the situation indicate that the attack has two main reasons.

First, the announcement by Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who has led the country since the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, that he will call elections in August 2025, a date that many in Haiti consider too far away.

Second, Henry's own visit to Kenya last week to negotiate a police support mission under the UN umbrella.

The criminal gangs, who dominate a good part of the capital, did not like it and made it known.

Police patrol the streets of Port-au-Prince this Friday.RALPH TEDY EROL (Reuters)

Videos of extreme cruelty have circulated on social networks, where groups of armed boys - de facto power in the city - harass the corpses of murdered police officers or stalk with drones the handful of agents who are trying to contain the onslaught, never as savage as now. .

At the same time, crime leaders, a notable case, that of former police officer Jimmy Cherizier, alias

Barbecue

, give crazy press conferences in which they present themselves as social leaders, willing to do anything to see the Government fall.

A worker in the private security industry, Alan, his real name, spent the afternoon of February 29 taking people to his house.

“Through the WhatsApp groups we already saw that everything was very hot.

Me and my team were moving our clients to their homes.

There were 15 in total.

Then everyone went their own way and waited for all this to stop.

The police have no capacity,” he explains: “Everyone is afraid, they are waiting for help to arrive from abroad;

It is the only possibility.”

Possible foreign aid is the talk these days in Haiti.

For months, the United Nations has been trying to finalize the sending of a police support mission to the country, which, with 11 million inhabitants, has fewer than 10,000 police officers.

Kenya raised her hand to lead it and pledged to send at least 1,000 agents.

Other nations, such as Spain, have also offered human and material support, all under the financial umbrella of the United States, which has promised a logistical investment of 200 million dollars.

Criminal gangs, which number in dozens in Port-au-Prince, with changing leadership and alliances, are uncomfortable with the arrival of an international mission.

Born in the heat of political fights, their dynamics have changed in recent years.

During the first two decades of the century, they functioned as shock groups at the service of the elites, in a political logic always linked to electoral cycles.

But Haiti has not held elections since 2016 and the gangs began to look for resources elsewhere.

Since then, extortion and kidnapping have become their main activities.

Protesters protest to demand the resignation of Ariel Henry, this Thursday in Port-au-Prince.Johnson Sabin (EFE)

Romain Le Cour, a researcher at The Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, a civil organization based in Switzerland, points out that “the kidnapping industry operates on an industrial scale in Haiti.”

Le Cour, who left Port-au-Prince this week on one of the last flights he took off from the airport, recalls the case of a victim he recently interviewed.

“He told me that he was in a safe house, with 70 other kidnapped people.

He said they could keep you there for a month or a month and a half.

Do you see the necessary logistics?

Everyone knows someone who was kidnapped in Port-au-Prince.

And if not, it is a matter of time,” he adds.

A cornered prime minister

The figure of Ariel Henry embodies much of the chaos in Haiti.

The acting prime minister has not been able to return to the country.

His return flight from Kenya landed in Puerto Rico, where he awaits a solution to the crisis.

A source who knows the political situation in the capital points out that criminal groups are targeting the airport precisely because of him.

They do not want the airlines to operate again to prevent Henry's return and thus precipitate his resignation.

Puerto Rican police officers stand guard at the entrance to the hotel where Ariel Henry is staying, in San Juan, this March 8.Ricardo Arduengo (REUTERS)

“Henry's is a transitional government and, generally, governments like this have lasted two years here,” explains Haitian economist and sociologist Joseph Harold Pierre by phone from Cap Haitien.

“By announcing elections for August 2025, with whatever delays there may be and so on, Henry would be in power for five years.

A good part of the political class has been frustrated with this announcement,” he explains.

“I believe that there are going to be profound changes in the Government, changes of ministers, at least.

“I'm sure there are negotiations going on, but in secret,” says Pierre.

These negotiations are aimed in part at criminal gangs.

“Currently, there are two entities that have power in Haiti, the gangs and the international community.

Any political group that wants power and that does not achieve legitimacy before the two of them will not be able to do anything,” Pierre continues.

In that sense, the criminal leader Barbecue, who has emerged as spokesperson for a federation of the most powerful criminal gangs in the capital, which he calls

Vivre Ensemble

(Living together) has been very clear: if Henry does not leave, he says, there will be a “civil war that will lead to genocide.”

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